Former Republican National Committee chairman is still a contender in the Virginia Senate race against incumbent Mark Warner, according to a new poll.

A Quinnipiac survey has Gillespie trailing Warner by nine points, 48 percent to 39, among likely voters. A Libertarian candidate, who ran in the 2013 governor’s race and has somehow hinted he’d support Medicaid expansion (very libertarian of him), is drawing 6 percent of the vote.

Other polls have shown Gillespie farther back: He trails Warner 46–27 in a recent Roanoke University poll, though that was a noticeable improvement from his standing when that pollster looked at the race in July. Politico’s Morning Score points out that both candidates have positive image ratings in the purple state, but that Gillespie has struggled with name recognition.